but after some hesitation was refused permission. So for much of the Entente offensive the Second Army, with its 48 battalions, 251 cannons and 462 machine guns, limited itself with sending small reinforcements to the First Army. Nonetheless, the army continued to hold the Struma line and foiled a Greek attempt to capture Serres, gaining a few cannons as trophies. The overall situation however forced the Bulgarian government ask the Entente for an armistice and general Ivan Lukov was dispatched to Salonika for the negotiations with general Franchet d'Esperey. The talks reached a successful conclusion and the armistice was signed on 29 September 1918. This marked the end of Bulgarian participation the Great War. The Second Army pulled back to the interior of the country and was demobilized on 16 October. Second World War World War II for the Axis Throughout 1940 and 1941, the Kingdom of Bulgaria, under Tsar Boris III, allied itself with Adolf Hitler's Germany, entered the regained Southern Dobrudja, and captured Thrace, and much of Macedonia in the process. In the Bulgarian Army, there were five field armies and some 30 divisions. In the summer 1941 the Second Army with the 10th Rodopi Division and the 2nd Border Brigade occupied Western Thrace and parts of Aegean Macedonia. The army set up its headquarters at Xanthi. The defence of the Aegean coast however required more specific measures and by the end of the year the Second Army and its units moved to the old border of Bulgaria and were replaced by a special Belomorski (Aegean) Detachment and the 11th division of the First Army. World War II for the Allies In early September 1944, the rapidly advancing Red Army reached the northern border of Bulgaria. In an attempt to prevent the entry of the Red Army in the country on 26 August, the government of Ivan Bagryanov declared Bulgarian neutrality in the German-soviet war. This measure was not enough and soon his government fell and on 5 September the USSR declared war on the country. Three days latter the new government of Konstantin Muraviev declared war on Germany in vain as the Red Army entered the country and soon the prime minister was overthrown and replaced with the Fatherland Front's government which immediately concluded a ceasefire with the soviets and prepared the Bulgarian Army for operations against the forces of Germany. The German Army Group E began